The Duchess of Zeon wrote:Broomstick wrote:
And logical thinking as well - memorizing facts and formulas is a useless exercise unless you can use them.
To me a classical education involves logical/rational thinking by definition, since these concepts were invented/discovered by the Greeks and Romans to begin with, and they are indeed one of the fundamental components of their outlook on the universe. To teach the classics is to teach these skills, the two are completely interlinked.
Never mind that for centuries "classical learning" was taught by rote memorization and slavish devotion to the "masters", which stifled independent observation until the Renaissance kicked in and people started asking questions and thinking for themselves.
By the way - those ancient Greeks you are so enamoured of considered muscial instruction - as in
how to play and instrument - to be a vital part of education.
Oh, I certainly think that people should learn at least one language, preferably an East Asian one. We need good programmes in Chinese and Japanese from the elementary level on, certainly.
But for that purpose, Latin is no more useful than any other Indo-European language.
But many of the European languages--the Romance languages--are in truth litle more than bastardized Latin, and the teaching of Latin, and the connections between English and Latin, in turn provide for the connections between English and those languages, and teaching students Latin so that they can grasp how all these languages are interconnected will make them much easier to learn. I believe it would not be impossible to easily learn every single Romance language--even for someone not gifted in language--if you had a firm knowledge of Latin combined with one's English skills first of all.
My goodness.
Do you speak
any languages other than your native tongue? My French studies introduced me to
les faux amis, the "false friends". Words that mean one thing in one language and something else entirely in another, due to changes over time. It can happen even within a language. In English, for instance, "faggot" changed from "fuel with which to start a fire" to "sexual deviant suitable for burning" - where it doesn't mean "small paper tube filled with tobacco"
The Romance languages such as Spanish and French are not
just "bastardized" Latin any more than English is a bastard child of French and Anglo-Saxon. French, for example, still retain numerous bits of the ancient Gaul tongue, which is part of what distinguishes it from Spanish, Italian, and Romanian. They are full languages in their own right, with all the quirks and changes that entails. Knowing Latin
might make learning French easier, but it does not allow you to somehow magically comprehend it. It's still a separate language. That said, my knowledge of French does enable me to read many simple things in Spanish as they languages are closely related, but in no one case I be said to know Spanish. It would make learning Spanish easier than, say, learning Irish Gaelic (which I have
also studied, as it happens)
What's most important is learning the second language
early - WHAT language that is, is not so important and forcing the young brain to grow the translation capability.
In an ideal world, I'd suggest learning one major living language and one obscure/dead one -- but then, an ideal world would also have ample time for such "useless" pursuits as music and art as well.
And what, exactly, are children of 12 or 14 supposed to get out of this? Does any child that age have the intelluctual maturity to truly understand and appreciate some of these works? Too heavy an approach will turn kids off to reading - certainly they need to be challenged, but if you set the bar too high no one will reach it.
It was expected of children of that age some time, and there is no reason to think that we have gotten dumber over the years; in fact development happens faster thanks to better nutrition these days. It was very common two hundred years ago for those sorts of works to be introduced in the immediately pre-teen years.
Two hundred years ago formal education was the domain of the elite, and even there not all children of the elite were equally educated. There was a LOT of selection going on, and education required both money and aptitude. This does not make the methods used then automatically applicable to the masses.
And, again, I think your method relies a little too much on "book learning". For example, people absorb Shakespeare much better by
seeing it, rather than reading it - for one thing, it helps get around the archaic spelling. As an actual play would be most ideal, but video can substitute if need be - but not playing a video as a baby-sitter. Shakespeare could dovetail very nicely with both historical discussions (as Shakespeare did a number of "history plays") AND language studies, given the very obvious differences in the language of Elizabethan England and English today.
Is this a ridgidly assigned curriculum, or at some point are the children allowed some input into what they take?
I would lean towards a fixed number of classes per year of certain types, with a certain degree of variation in types. However, generally, the curriculum would be fixed: The goal in that is to provide everyone with a certain degree of basic knowledge sufficient so that they can immediately speciailize once they get to college instead of dragging through two years of basic and generalized classes there before they get onto the subject that they are actually going to pursue.
If everyone goes to college where do the plumbers, roofers, auto mechanics, and short-order cooks come from?
How do you determine what is "basic" knowledge? Aptitudes really
do vary between people. Every normal person can learn their native tongue and a passing familiarity with another one or two - but does everyone really need to be a fluent polyglot and is turning everyone into that a good use of society's resources? Even in something like math - does an electrician need four years of studying statistics, or would math more appropriate to his/her profession be of more worth? Yes, even a professional artist needs reading, writing, and arithmatic to a certain level of proficiency - but when I was earning my degree I took math courses dealing with optics and the mathamatics of symmetry and pattern and not four years of calculus orbital mechanics that were irrelevant to what I had chosen to study.
Yes, I think some tracking of students would be good - NOT with the idea that you lock people into a track for life, but with the idea that at a certain point their skills, interests, and aptitudes will become apparent and you can steer them towards areas where they have a high chance of success. Not
everyone is a prodigy or rocket scientist - you really DO need cooks and shoe makers in this world, and there are folks who are quite happy in those professions -- who may well go home and read "classic" literature in their spare time. If they choose to.
I think that critical thinking skills as taught through a study of philosophy and the development of logic and rational evaluation as a method of evaluating philosophical and scientific claims are sufficient for this.
While I absolutely value the "hard sciences" and math, I do believe there is a necessary role for the "softer arts". And past societies have seemed to believe the same - why else would the Greeks value musical skill along with public speaking? Why did the samurai of Japan - practical warriors all - also feel it was important to study poetry and flower arranging?
And why do you discard every language in Europe outside of Spanish and Portugese? Portuguese? Is German so totally useless? What about Russian?[/qoute]
Portuguese is spoke in the Americas by a large number of people, and in other parts of the world. Same with Spanish.
And French isn't?
And by your argument we should all be learning Mandarin as a second tongue and forget Europe.
And who decides what is "proper" art? You?
Proper art is based around mathematical principles and logical forms.
According to who -- ?
Music, like language, is best learned young. I could see an argument that perhaps school is not the best forum for teaching it. But then I am biased, I admit - I taught myself to read music and play piano when I was about 6 years old.
An excellent achievement, but the fact that you taught yourself essentially proves my point I daresay.
No, it doesn't. The achievement occured because
everyone in my family plays piano and it never got into my head that this was something difficult or unusual - EVERYONE with two hands and normal coordination is capable of learning to play the instrument to a certain minimal level of proficiency because it is a mechanical, hand-eye coordination skill. I
don't have extraordinary skill in music, I'm rather unexceptional for someone who's been playing 35 years, I just had an environment that encouraged me to develop what talent I had.
And by the way - learning to read music also helped in learning to read English. I had to read the instruction books, after all - yet another example where integrated learning is to the student's benefit (and why I am no fan of the Suzuki method)
. 
- just admit you have a bias for Latin. Hell, I'd like to make meditation and knitting part of the curiculum, too, but I know better.
